In the month of April, we will be having debates based on the books you're reading now. The teams for these debates are here.

This activity will have two phases: A comparison and a discussion.

In the first phase, the two teams scheduled each day must get together and figure out a long-form answer to the question: "Compare and contrast your two books focusing on their historical context and themes". This answer should have a main idea, explain what the two books have in common in terms of historical context and themes, and explain what they do not have in common. This section will be worth 50% of your grade, and it will be graded by the teacher using the following rubric:

Rubric

There is a discussion of both sources where explicit links
are made between them.

20%

Includes clear and valid points of comparison.

15%

Includes clear and valid points of contrast.

15%

50%

For the second phase, each team will have to answer a debate question that will be sent to them a week before the debate, and later refute the opposing team's answer. For both the answer and the rebuttal, one person in the team will be selected to speak and the others must be quiet. This section will be worth 50% of your grade, and it will be graded by a random selection of your classmates using the following rubric:

Rubric

Response is focused on answering the question.

10%

The source (i.e. the team’s book) is clearly referenced
and used as evidence for their answer to the question.

10%

Previous research is evident in the answer, and is clearly
relevant for the topic at hand.

10%

There is an effective conclusión that summarizes the team’s
answer.

10%

The team’s rebuttal or answer to the other team points out
specific points from the other team’s answer and refutes them using evidence.

10%

50%

Each participation will have a strict time limit of 6 minutes, and the rebuttal will include another 8 minutes for each team to prepare.

martes, 20 de marzo de 2018

Every Wednesday until the end of the semester, we will start watching a movie in class.

Obviously, this won't be enough time to finish any movie, so you may optionally attend an afternoon screening of the whole movie for extra points in Activities. To get the extra points, you have to arrive on time and stay for the whole movie. People who do other things during the afternoon screening will be asked to leave. :)

Afternoon screenings will happen in Room C-20, every Wednesday in April, from 4 to 6 PM.

lunes, 12 de marzo de 2018

1. Fragment from Adolf Hilter's speech to the Reichstag on January 30, 1939.

"It was nearly two thousand years before the scattered Germanic tribes emerged as one people; before the countless lands and states forged one Reich. We may now consider this process of the formation of the German nation as having reached its conclusion. The creation of the Greater German Reich represents the culmination of our Volk’s thousand-year struggle for existence.
As streams of German blood flow together therein, so do traditions of times past, their standards and symbols, and, above all else, all the great men of whom their contemporaries were rightly proud. Small matter whose side they stood on in their day, all those daring dukes, great kings, formidable warlords, mighty emperors, and around them the inspired geniuses and heroes of the past served as instruments of Providence in the formative process of a nation. Insofar as we embrace this great Reich in grateful reverence, the wealth of German history reveals itself to us in all its splendor."

2. Fragment from "They Thought They Were Free: Germans, 1933-1945" by Milton Mayer

"If the last and the worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and the smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked. If, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in 1943 had come immediately after the ‘German Firm’ stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in 1933. But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.
And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying ‘Jew swine,’ collapses it all at once, and you see...everything has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you lived in - your nation, your people - is not the world you were born in at all."

3. Fragment from "What is Fascism?" by George Orwell

"To begin with, it is clear that there are very great differences, some of them easy to point out and not easy to explain away, between the regimes called Fascist and those called democratic. […] Except for the relatively small number of Fascist sympathizers, almost any English person would accept ‘bully’ as a synonym for ‘Fascist’. That is about as near to a definition as this much-abused word has come.
But Fascism is also a political and economic system. Why, then, cannot we have a clear and generally accepted definition of it? Alas! we shall not get one — not yet, anyway. To say why would take too long, but basically it is because it is impossible to define Fascism satisfactorily without making admissions which neither the Fascists themselves, nor the Conservatives, nor Socialists of any colour, are willing to make. All one can do for the moment is to use the word with a certain amount of circumspection and not, as is usually done, degrade it to the level of a swearword."4. Fragment from the psychological profile of Adolf Hitler, written by the United States Office of Strategic Services

"His primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it."

Concepts:

Authoritarianism: Political system that concentrates power in the hands of a leader or small elite with no legal responsibility to the population, generally by limiting freedom of thought and action.

Totalitarianism: Variation of authoritarianism that seeks to subordinate all elements of individual life to the state. Governments might do this by supplanting all existing institutions (whether social, political or cultural) with new ones in the pursuit of a special nationalist goal, while suppressing all types of dissent and opposition.

Cult of personality: The creation of an idealized image of a leader through unquestioning flattery in the media, the arts, and public discourse.

Propaganda: Subjective or inaccurate information that may be used to further an agenda or cause emotional responses.

Nationalism: The belief that a nation should be allowed to unify and pursue its own purposes.

Individually, you will interview a family member, friend, or acquaintance and interview them about your family's experience during the 1920s, the 1930s, or the 1940s. You will pick which decade you focus on and specify it in the main idea of a 500-1,000-word essay.

You will design the interview and conduct it in the language that is convenient for the person you are interviewing. You may choose to interview them about any decade from the second partial (1920s, 1930s, and 1940s), but the interview should answer the question:How did the decade's historical events affect everyday life for your family?

On March 23, before midnight, upload to Blackboard the following two files:

A Word document (.docx, 10% of your grade) where you write an account of the event or events your interviewee talked about. It should be between 500 and 1,000 words (10%), identify your relationship to the person you interviewed (20%), and in an essay structure, mention the interviewee's perspective on at least one specific historical event that was seen in class (30%). The development and conclusion should carefully follow the points outlined in the main idea (30%). The file should be named "My Story_NAME.docx".

A picture of you and the person you interviewed. The file should be named "PP2 photo_NAME" (10% of your grade).

Besides discussing the three articles from Wednesday, we will discuss the concepts of:

Victimization: The action of singling someone out for cruel or unjust treatment. Example: The notion that it's okay to treat some people badly because of who they are.

Victim-blaming: Blaming a victim for the crime or wrongdoing that was committed against them. Example: Implying that sexual assault victims are responsible for the actions of their assailant.

Revictimization: Forcing victims of crime or wrongdoing to experience it again by having to constantly reenact or retell the events. Example: Social workers who repeatedly ask victims of sexual violence about their experience.